Yahoo! Answers is an example of an Internet-accessible answer submission system that allows users all over the world to submit questions that other users all over the world can view and answer. Users of answer submission systems submit such questions and answers using an Internet Browser such as Mozilla Firefox. After a user (an “asker”) has submitted a question, other users can read the question and, if they choose, submit an answer to the question. Answer submission systems typically allow users to see, along with a question, answers that have been submitted for that question, and the pseudonyms of the users (the “answerers”) who submitted those answers.
A particular question might receive multiple different answers from multiple different users. Some of the answers might be better than others. Answer submission systems may provide a mechanism for users to judge the value of an answer. For example, Yahoo! Answers provides a mechanism whereby the asker can select the best answer submitted for the asker's question. The selected best answer is designated as such. Other users can see which of the answers was selected as the best answer.
Over time, some answerers might tend to submit better answers to questions than other answerers do. This may be the result of the expertise of some answerers in comparison to the relative inexperience of other answerers on a particular topic, for example. Answerers who submit better answers might tend to have a greater proportion of their answers selected by askers as best answers. Consequently, the number of an answerer's answers that have been selected by askers as best answers can be used as an indicator of the expertise, wisdom, trustworthiness, and/or reliability of that answerer. At least one answer submission system provides a mechanism whereby everyone can see the number of best answers that have been submitted by each answerer. Askers might give more weight to answers provided by a particular answerer if a high percentage of the particular answerer's answers have been selected as best answers.
For each question, though, there can only be one best answer selected from among potentially many answers submitted for that question. Consequently, the vast majority of answers submitted for each question will not be selected as best answers. Unless they are extraordinary, most answerers do not have a very good chance of having many of their answers selected as best answers. However, with each answer that a particular answerer submits, the chances that at least one of the particular answerer's answers will be selected as a best answer improve at least marginally. As a result, answerers who have submitted a large quantity of answers tend to have more reliable “best-answer indicators” than answerers who have submitted fewer answers.
The traditional best-answer indicator, which is sometimes defined as the proportion of an answerer's answers that have been selected as best answers, sometimes fails to reflect accurately the true merit and credibility of that answerer. An answerer who has submitted only one answer probably will not have his answer selected as a best answer, with the result that his best-answer indicator will have a value of zero. As a result, many new answerers will end up with best-answer indicators that seem to indicate that those answerers' answers are not highly credible—even though, in reality, those answerers might be very credible. Those new answerers might go on to have a greater-than-average proportion of their answers selected as best answers over time. Unfortunately, when an answerer has submitted answers to only a few questions, the number of that answerer's answers that have been selected as best answers is often not a very accurate reflection of that answerer's merit or credibility. Alternatively, in the unusual instance in which an answerer has only submitted a single answer and that answer has been chosen as a best answer, the value of that answerer's best-answer indicator will be one, indicating that his answers are always selected as best answers—which is virtually impossible.
The approaches described in this section are approaches that could be pursued, but not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, it should not be assumed that any of the approaches described in this section qualify as prior art merely by virtue of their inclusion in this section.